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I have seen a National Ballet of Guangzhou which turned into just Guangzhou Ballet. About 2 years ago NBG staged what had been Los Angeles Classical Ballet’s “Nutcracker” at California State University, Long Beach. I’ll digress just a second to day that LACB was a small company that was basically the professional component of Long Beach Ballet Arts Center and they used to put on a “Nutcracker” every winter at the Long Beach Civic Auditorium until recently. LBBAC is still there, but no LACB. Their director, David Wilcox, and their ballet mistress, Lisa Marie Goodwin, helped NB Guangzhou stage it and I really liked it. Their dancers are well trained and their principals and soloists quite lyrical and obviously well coached. I was hoping that they’d come back the following year, but they didn’t. I’m not sure if they just borrowed or rented the “Nutcracker” production or if they own them outright (more about this later).<P>Last year, Guangzhou Ballet came to Saddleback College’s McKinney Theater (Mission Viejo, California) to stage 2 performances of their own “Celestial Phoenix..” It’s also called in English, “Silk Fly” for reasons I’ll get to in a minute. “Celestial Phoenix” is a 2 act ballet based on a Chinese folk tale that resembles that of “Firebird.” As I recall, a young man goes into the forest and captures the Phoenix, who like Firebird is a beautiful ballerina. She begs for her freedom and the young man releases her. A passing Emperor is impressed by the young man’s generosity and becomes his patron and eventually marries the Princess to him. In Act II, he becomes something of a spoiled brat and is chastised by the Phoenix. Somewhere in there is a burning forest and the forest animals running away. Sorry, but my memory isn’t that good and I’m not sure where I left the program.<P>The costumes were nice and some of the divertissement were quite beautiful. There was, however, a tendency to meld together traditional Chinese art forms with the ballet and I’m not sure that the results were that successful. For example, there were dances using long ribbons on sticks and so forth. I don’t care for dances that rely upon props in the general sense, and this choreography used a lot of Chinese props. But, much of the divertissement was like divertissement in the Western sense and made the dancers look really fabulous. I remember being very impressed with the quality of their classical training, but I am not a professional critic and rarely catch little slips and mistakes.<P>O yes, I almost forgot to mention about the different English titles. Sometimes the translation from the Chinese words are inconsistent or even rough approximations at best. This happens a lot in Chinese restaurants, for example. Especially the names of many Chinese restaurants in Chinese bears no relation to the Name in English. For example, the popular "Shanghai Restaurants" as they are known in English are actually called, "3-6-9" in Chinese because "3-6-9" are lucky numbers in Chinese culture but would be meaningless in English. But, back to the ballet:<P>Practically the best thing about the performances at the McKinney Theater was the very nice tour Program. For only $10 you could buy an envelope that contained laminated cards like the old lobby cards with pictures of various productions in their rep. Very slick. If you could read Chinese, you could even learn more about each ballet and its performers. There was one card for the company featuring a very artistic portrait of their director, ballerina Zhang Dandan. The card for “Nutcracker” showed the old LACB costumes and sets, which made me wonder if they belong to the GB now. This is what I learned about the company:<P>The company was founded in January 1994 and is located in the vicinity of the Botanical Garden in the Tianhe District of Guangzhou City. Its director is Ms. Zhang Dandan, a former ballerina of the Central Ballet of China. Its dancers are for the most derived from the Beijing Dance Academy. The company lists a wide variety of ballets in its repertory including “Nutcracker,” “Swan Lake,” “Giselle,” “Silk Fly,” “Anna Karenina,” “R&J,” and “Coppelia.” Also, its list of rep includes shorter works like Corsaire pdd, Esmeralds pdd, “Dying Swan,” and etc. Some of its dancers have won prizes in international competitions, like Ms. Tong Shusheng at a competition in 1996 in Paris and Ms. Guo Fei and Mr. Qui lu at another one in 1997. Other prizes are listed, but I can’t tell where those competitions were.<P>Unfortunately, I don’t know whether GB is planning on another tour to the U.S., but if they come anywhere nearby, I plan to go.<BR><p>[This message has been edited by Jeff (edited July 25, 2001).]
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